It’s somewhat ironic that in the same week Egypt shut phone and internet access off to its entire country, a couple of dumbasses here in America want to do the same thing. Joe Lieberman, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
Working from home today due to the snow on the ground. I was all excited to drag the snowblower out of the garage, point it at the driveway, and be done in 20 minutes, but it died when it hit the slushy ice at the edge of the road. All attempts to restart it failed, because the pullrope feels like it’s bound inside the drum. Did the engine seize? Who knows.
From Metafilter: Pure awesome. A 5-year-old kid wrote a letter to PBS asking for a superhero show. Within a few hours, PBS responded. (Finn loves Super Why! and asks for it by name).
Sadly, after 20 years of loyal service, my surplus combat boots have sprung a leak. The sole of the left boot is cracked open to the point where my foot got very cold and very wet this morning on my way in to work. Actually, I was going in to a farewell breakfast for a colleague, so my normal commute was extended by a 6-block walk to the harbor through puddles of mushy snow, and on our return I began to notice the leak. I’m not entirely broken up about it, though—these boots are better suited for dry weather anyway, because they have lousy soles for winter grip (read: none) so I only wore them about 1/2 of the year anyway. My hiking boots, which date back to 2000 or so, are literally falling apart at the seams, so the timetable for wet weather footwear has now been moved up dramatically.
Mr. Scout stopped by on Friday and, among other things, got the upstairs bathroom ready for lights, cooked us a delicious dinner of coq au vin, and helped me bottle the american amber that’s been bubbling in the basement. The gravity reading we took was a lot higher than we’d been expecting, so it may be that the beer got infected, which would suck.
Pressing on, we added sugar and bottled two full cases, figuring it will be extra-sweet when it’s ready.
Saturday, our electrician neighbor knocked at 9 and we got started working on the remainder of the electrical projects both upstairs and down. There’s a newer, larger subpanel on the first floor with correct breakers for the office, working cans in the ceiling, a heater mounted in the bathroom, outlets on the chimney wall, and 3-way wiring at each end of the room. I also added insulation in the wall gaps and down under the threshold of the outside door. Upstairs, we got the wiring run to the bathroom, cans in the ceiling, a run for the 3-way switches, holes cut for the sink outlets, and runs for the floor heater and bathroom fan. This evening he’s going to stop back out to fish a wire through the living room ceiling for a fan before we close everything off. Once I know that’s going in, I’m scheduling the drywall delivery and installation.
Update: All of September and October 2003 is entered into WordPress. Next up is August.
Lights, wires, and heater are installed in the side room. We still have to run a line out to the living room for a ceiling fan, but other than that it’s ready for drywall.
Good news! Our electrician will be at the house at 8:30 AM tomorrow morning to get things wrapped up. We’re shooting to get the downstairs wiring finished and the upstairs under way (enough to finally install insulation and keep the house warm).
And, we’re bottling tonight! Woo-hoo!
There was a woman who peeked out from behind the curtain of a room below the sign, checking up on what I was doing. To tell the truth, it spooked me out a little bit.
Here’s a great article on how to wake up a sleeping Mac (provided you’ve set it up correctly): Wake on LAN: don’t let sleeping Macs lie.
Here’s a great little post on the BP about tire size equivalents. Currently I’m running a set of 32×11.5R15 BF Goodrich Mud Terrains, but I’d like to set them aside for a smoother road-going tread at some point. It looks like 16″ tires are more plentiful, so the first thing I’d need is a set of four rims to mount tires on. I’d been led to believe I would need something like an LT315/70R15, but the BP thread is saying a 265/75R16 would work on a 16″ rim and sit at the same height as a 32″. Which would mean that a set of four Dunlop Radial Rovers (the brand I preferred on Chewbacca) would be about $118/tire.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.